Ok, now I have added Google Analytics to my SEO check-list

I just saw a very interesting post from my friend Matt Paines on Google Analytics affecting ranking. I have actually been seeing sites loose rank over the past months with out any clear reason, all but one are using GA.

European Search Personality of the year 2014, Kristján Már Hauksson, is the Co-Founder and COO of SMFB Engine, based in Oslo, Norway.
This newfound digital activation/marketing agency works closely with the award winning creative agency, SMFB, in making sure that each idea has the digital presence to make it fly. Kristján is a publish author on the topic Internet Marketing and Search Engine Marketing.

2 thoughts on “Ok, now I have added Google Analytics to my SEO check-list”

This might be a problem, but from where I stand the only things that might contribute to that problem with tools like Google Analytics is:

1. That the code is placed before any real text happens (just under the <body> and by that taking valuable text space.

2. And/or the code is placed before any real text happens (just under the <body> and the 0pix image stops the site from loading by stalling. I would imagine that the spiders/crawlers do have JavaScript disabled so this might contribute. (Google does not use 0 pix image)

3. Even if placed just over the </body> this might also pose a problem, though less likely

4. Again the code itself or communications with the JS file might also pose a problem, though very unlikely.

It’s all about access, is it not?

Another scenario is that the cookie or the “harassment” that the search engine spider get’s hit by the analytics tool when visiting a site might be a violation to some “spam” detection and therefore flagging the site for some kind of penalisation and on this case lowering the the Page Rank.
Google is a huge company and the left hand might not know what the right hand is doing?

This is actually a discussions I have had in the past, generally with analytics code full stop, regardless of vendor are that they SHOULDN’T be put at the beginning of the page as this MIGHT (stress might) have an effect on page rank / visability.

I advise all of our clients to ensure that the code is in the BODY, just before the close tag. This is most SEO freindly.

The beginning of the page code is the most important in terms of page ranking and indexing etc.